The 3% Rule: Why Your Strategy Sessions Die by Monday | Lee Benson
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What does Lee Benson mean by the '3% rule' between strategy and execution?
You can grind 20 hours a day and never get to where you want to be.
Knowing what to do is pretty straightforward for the most part. That's only 3% of the equation. 97% is actually executing on it. The rest of them, I put them in this category called please do your job. Well, if it was perfect every single day, why would I need a leader? Love the journey, love the struggle.
Is there a blind spot? Is there something we're missing?
AI probably isn't going to take your job, but somebody with AI skills likely will.
there's a couple of things that I picked up on that like, I just, I'm just really interested in. Um, and, and you actually said something that, that kind of captures it, which was like the execution side and like digging through your stuff. And obviously, you know, companies, you know, execute to win and all that, but like, I want to differentiate and really hammer on, and tell me if this isn't where you want to go, but it's just kind of the path that I had, was... What does execution actually mean? Like, I think we all kind of have this ethereal idea of like, oh, I just do stuff or I have a plan and I execute it. But like, we both know you can have the best laid plans. You can do work every day.
You can grind 20 hours a day and never get to where you want to be. Like, what does someone who has created, as your words, generational wealth for themselves and their family in the future look what is execution actually mean? And how how do we need to frame this idea of executing to be successful? Because I know plenty of people that work hard that are still living paycheck to paycheck, right? And they'd be executing a plan. But I wouldn't say that they're successful. They're not successful in the way that they want to be successful, right? They're just grinding to produce just enough to get by. And what is the difference between someone that's executing in that way and someone who's actually executing to win, not to just play off your name, but to get there?
Because I kept coming back to this idea when I was looking through your stuff of like, I don't know that I've even ever heard like a really deep, articulate conversation about the idea of execution, about what this really means, what it takes, how you make this not just grinding, not just hustle porn, but like a process for getting the things done that need to get done. And that was kind of where my mind went.
If that's cool with you, then... I love the question. I mean, to me, execution... is creating objectively measurable value. When I talk about creating value, I always think about it holistically. So it's material, it's money, everybody gets that. It's positive emotional energy, which to me is the scarcest commodity on the planet for so many reasons. It's the X factor for leaders. And there's spiritual value creation, which is about connectedness. Whether you're deeply religious or not doesn't matter. Being connected is really a good thing to self, family, community, and beyond. So objectively measurable value. So let's lay that out. And I think one of the challenges, so I love doing work in the for-profit, nonprofit, public, private space, also within families.
And how are we objectively creating value as a family intentionally? measured across all three of those. So once we have that foundation, we want to create value this way and we want to get better and better at it over time. And I'm going to get to your question about a sort of a system or how to think about holding it all together, just like an operating system for a computer holding all the software applications together. But once we define that, and most companies aren't very good at it, if you ask an employee, how do you create value for the business, they often read a job description. That's a giant opportunity to get them aligned to creating value. You create value this way, you're held accountable to this outcome primarily.
Here's how we measure it. You're either on track or not over time. If everyone in the business, any business out there, any organization is really clear how their role is designed to create value and we're developing them to create more and more over time.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What does Lee Benson mean by the '3% rule' between strategy and execution?
0:00–9:39
2
How should roles be defined so employee job descriptions don't limit value creation?
9:39–33:43
3
What structure creates 'employee as CEO of their role' and how does development scale value?
33:43–55:52
4
How can open-book profit-sharing and transparent compensation stop salary disputes?
55:52–1:04:13
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